Self-driving cars should be liable for accidents, not the passengers—UK gov’t

Where the manufacturer is found to be liable, the insurer will be able to pursue a subrogated claim against the manufacturer under existing common law and product liability arrangements and recover their costs from the manufacturer. It is possible that the first few cases will go to court though over time we expect insurers and manufacturers will develop processes to handle subrogated claims quickly and easily. And, in any case, we do not consider it to be in a manufacturer’s commercial interest to be unhelpful to insurers in determining liability or paying subrogated claims; ultimately insurers could potentially cease offering insurance products for their vehicles if their route to recovery was consistently blocked

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In a somewhat rare display of tech savviness, there are two exemptions listed in the bill. If the vehicle owner makes unauthorised changes to the car's software, or fails to install a software update as mandated by their insurance policy, then the insurer doesn't have to pay.

It isn't clear at this point which capabilities will be enough to classify a vehicle as "self-driving." The draft law asks the department for transport (DfT) to work it out, post haste, and then to determine which vehicles qualify for the new type of insurance. Presumably the DfT will pick one of the SAE "levels" as the threshold. Advanced road cars like the Tesla Model S or a new Mercedes are somewhere between Level 2 and Level 3 on the autonomy scale, but I wouldn't be surprised if the DfT requires Level 4 or perhaps even Level 5 before the vehicle can be held liable.

The Ford Motor Company is skipping Level 3 autonomy—when the driver must be prepared to take the wheel—and going straight to Level 4, when there is no steering wheel at all. The reason? Its own engineers were falling asleep during Level 3 test drives.
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Apparently, the Ford engineers kept nodding off even when every attempt was made to keep them on their toes. Bells and alarms did no good, nor did putting in a second engineer to ride shotgun. He nodded off, too. It was this spectacle that convinced Ford honchos to double down on the damn-the-stopgap push to full autonomy, which Google’s Waymo pioneered.

When you drive, you are constantly updating all that is around you and updating your mental model. In level 3 you can go to sleep until the car needs you. When the car needs you, it wakes you up. But at that point you have to build your mental model from scratch, which could take many seconds at a minimum. Crashes happen in very few seconds.

It is probably simplest for the owner of the car to maintain insurance as before. With the reduction in collisions, the insurance cost to the owner is likely to be significantly lower than it is now.

If the company insuring the owner thinks the manufacturer was negligent they can have court battles over it.

"If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight! Sun Tzu said that, and I'd say he knows a little bit more about fighting than you do, pal, because he invented it, and then he perfected it so that no living man could best him in the ring of honor. Then, he used his fight money to buy two of every animal on earth, and then he herded them onto a boat, and then he beat the crap out of every single one. And from that day forward any time a bunch of animals are together in one place it's called a zoo! (Beat) Unless it's a farm!"
--Soldier, TF2

-- Tempe, Arizona police say no injuries, other vehicle at fault
-- Uber began testing self-driving cars in state last year

Uber Technologies Inc. is suspending its self-driving car program after one of its autonomous vehicles was involved in a high-impact crash in Tempe, Arizona, the latest incident for a company reeling from multiple crises.

There was a human behind the wheel but it is unclear [to the reporter] whether he was in control.
The other car ran a red light
I guess I understand why Uber would suspend operations. They have to ask themselves, "Was there any way to avoid or mitigate the accident; could the software have done better than it did?"

"Involved in" was a weasel way of avoiding saying "Red light runner crashes into autonomous vehicle"

"If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight! Sun Tzu said that, and I'd say he knows a little bit more about fighting than you do, pal, because he invented it, and then he perfected it so that no living man could best him in the ring of honor. Then, he used his fight money to buy two of every animal on earth, and then he herded them onto a boat, and then he beat the crap out of every single one. And from that day forward any time a bunch of animals are together in one place it's called a zoo! (Beat) Unless it's a farm!"
--Soldier, TF2

Ya know, if you had asked me 10 years ago what jobs or functions would be taken over by AI, I'd have put driving at the near the bottom of the list. Turned out to be much closer to the top.

They're going to analyze the hell out of that accident and if there was even a chance in hell that it could have been avoided or even slightly mitigated, they're going to incorporate the solution in every system, not just that car. This is a good thing.

Ya know, if you had asked me 10 years ago what jobs or functions would be taken over by AI, I'd have put driving at the near the bottom of the list. Turned out to be much closer to the top.

They're going to analyze the hell out of that accident and if there was even a chance in hell that it could have been avoided or even slightly mitigated, they're going to incorporate the solution in every system, not just that car. This is a good thing.

Quite true. And not so much clickbait as the news editor trying to force it to become part of a trend where it doesn't really fit.

"If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight! Sun Tzu said that, and I'd say he knows a little bit more about fighting than you do, pal, because he invented it, and then he perfected it so that no living man could best him in the ring of honor. Then, he used his fight money to buy two of every animal on earth, and then he herded them onto a boat, and then he beat the crap out of every single one. And from that day forward any time a bunch of animals are together in one place it's called a zoo! (Beat) Unless it's a farm!"
--Soldier, TF2

Rumblings of an Apple car started years ago, but now the talk is turning from fumes into something much more concrete.

For one, Apple's self-driving test cars have been spotted on the road, including by TechRadar as seen in an exclusive video.

What's more, the very official California Department of Motor Vehicles has issued permits to Apple to test self-driving car tech.

And finally, Apple itself has confirmed its interest in the self-driving space. If you need more evidence that Apple driverless car tech is in the works, we don't know what else we can say to convince you.

But big questions remain. Namely, what form will Apple's self-driving car tech take? Will it be an actual Apple Car? Will it be tech we can buy and integrate into our own vehicles? Will it be hardware and software licensed to third-party car makers? Or, will it be part of a service, run by Apple to transport us around in driverless cars?

We won't know the answers to these questions until Apple itself makes a self-driving car announcement, which could take place at WWDC 2018 on June 4, but until then, we've gathered up everything we know about the Apple car right here.